Hot Time in the Old Town
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: Road to Perdition Sequel to My Funny Valentine During a hot spell, Maguire breaks a wild news story which nearly brings him into the gun sights of Crazy Connor Rooney


+J.M.J.+  
  
Hot Time in the Old Town  
  
by "Matrix Refugee"  
  
Disclaimer:  
  
I don't own Road to Perdition, its characters (certainly NOT Maguire), concepts, or other indicia, which are the property of Sam Mendes, Max Allen Collins, David Self, DreamWorks SKG, 20th Century Fox, et al.   
  
Author's Note:  
  
(If you haven't read them, you might want to read the two stories which proceed this: "A Slaying Song Tonight", at   
  
http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1145343   
  
and "My Funny Valentine" at http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1208074 )  
  
I fell in love with the wild Damon Runyon-esque quality of the Bridie Rooney series, and this one is no exception to the model. I am amazed at how well she really clicks with Maguire's politely anti-social personality... and I'm delighted with the sheer number of crazy props I've thrown at his head and he's reacted to them (to date: snowball-tossing kids, fruitcake; a cannibalistic Murphy bed, a noisy radiator); add to this some beastly hot weather, a fruit salad...well, read on.  
  
* * * * * *   
  
Thank God the sun had gone down, but the heat still lingered in the air. Opening the windows in the apartment did little good, since it was just as hot outside as it was indoors, except the air outside moved a little, just enough to make the windowshade flap against the sides of the window casing.  
  
Nights like this, after delivering his day's (or evening's) work to his various publishers, Maguire parked himself under the cold water faucet in the bathtub, soaking the day's sweat and grime from his pores until the warmth of his body dulled the edge of the water's chill.  
  
Weather, the best policeman. Rain and snow kept people indoors and out of trouble, but heat had a much less predictable beat. During a hot spell, the crime rate would initially drop, but give it a few days and it got on people's nerves, fried their brains, impaired their judgement. He'd picked up some of his best work in June, July and August, such as the prints he'd just delivered to Needaker: A guy drowned in a bathtub, and from the tell-tale hand-shaped bruises on his wrists, this was no suicide...A well-fed businessman lying in a snarl on the floor after his girl slipped arsenic into his iced tea; seems she found out she wasn't his one-and-only...A guy who'd tangled with a boat propellar on the Chicago River: this one was almost too much even for the lurid tastes of Needaker the editor at "True Crime".   
  
Then there was the series he'd just wrapped for the "Herald", on a crime spree: A teenager had stolen a car, crashed it into the door of a restaurant, made off with the cash register; cops chased the kid who'd spooked and plowed into a fireplug, wrecking the undercarriage of the car. The kid took off on foot toward the river where he'd tried to escape by jumping in, only to fall head first into a loaded garbage scow heading out onto the lake.  
  
And then there was the less sensational yet no less odd shots: the shopkeepers and building superintendents, on more than a few streets, scratching their heads over finding that someone had swiped their garbage cans from the alleyways behind their buildings. The police had an eye on this case, but they hadn't turned up anything conclusive. Probably just a band of kids playing a mass prank, see how many garbage cans they could swipe before someone caught them in the act.  
  
But now he was doing his best to settle down for a well-deserved rest after the day's labors in the heat, no easy matter when you lived on the third floor, as he did.  
  
It was so beastly hot inside the apartment that he dragged the mattress off the bed and liad it out on the fire escape outside the kitchen window, in an effort to get some fresh air.  
  
He was just settling down when he heard an odd rattling, like someone on rollerskates passing by on the sidewalk below. He peered over the edge of the mattress to the pavement below, but the passerby had rolled out of sight.  
  
He lay back and started to doze, but he snapped awake when he heard the rollerskater pass below again. He looked down.  
  
Bridget Rooney, known as Bridie, his friend the scientifiction writer and occasional girlfriend, her leather haversack slung over her shoulder and clad in a sleeveless blouse over a flowered skirt hitched just above her knees, rollerskates strapped to her boots. And she was actually using rollerskates as a means of transportation.  
  
She rolled to a stop below the fire escape, looking up. He watched her around the edge of the mattress: normally he'd welcome her, but tonight was so damn sticky, he wasn't in the mood. She stooped down, groping for some stones, he guessed.  
  
He got the jump on her: "If you're going to throw stones at my window to see if I'm still up, you've got another thought coming," he called down.  
  
She straightened up. "Oh, there you are, Harl. Hot enough for you?"  
  
"I didn't order it, believe me. If I had my druthers, we'd have one relatively even temp the whole year round, less of this blistering heat or deadening cold."  
  
"Mind if I come up?" she asked.  
  
He glanced at the alarm clock on a board by the head of the mattress: 11.30. "At this hour?" he asked.  
  
"It beats sneaking past my landlady: she doesn't like the hours I keep."  
  
He moved over on the mattress, making room for her. "Come on up."  
  
She stooped, undid her skates, tied them together and slung them around her neck before climbing the ladder to his level.  
  
"Nice set-up," she remarked, coming to rest on the foot of the mattress. "Must be really nice if you get a breeze."  
  
"IF you get a breeze," he said, pulling in his legs. "So far we haven't"  
  
"You're right," she agreed, pushing her haversack throuhg the open window onto the dresser. "Even when the wind blows, it's just moving hot air." She turned back to him. "Can I be on the level with you?"  
  
He shrugged one shoulder. "About what?"  
  
She peered down to the sidewalk. "Why I'm here. I wanted to know if you minded my bunking here for a few days."  
  
"Why, may I ask? It's not exactly any cooler here."  
  
She chuckled and edged closer to him as she said, "Sure it is: Looking into your cool green-grey-blue-whatever colored eyes is like looking into a nice cold millpond."  
  
"Cut the mustard," he said, trying to sound irritated, but only sounding amused. "What's the deal?"  
  
She breathed audibly. "All right: my cousin Connor found out where I'm staying, so every night for the past night, he's been hanging about the sidewalk under my window, waiting for me to come out. I managed to smuggle some stuff out in the ol' haversack before he showed up for his vigil."  
  
"Ishkable," Maguire replied. "I got the space to spare."  
  
She reached over and kneaded his shoulder with her fingertips. Her grip slipped slightly, creeping past the edge of his undershirt and finding his skin. He shivered under her touch.  
  
"Thanks, fella," she said. "You're a dear, y' know that?"  
  
"Sure I do: you just told me," he teased. Growing serious, he added, "One thing, though."  
  
"Howzzat?"  
  
"Keep your distance if you share the mattress: it's too hot for... anything."  
  
She leaned her face close to his, aiming for his neck. He felt her breath fan his skin, heat amid the heat. She kissed him lingeringly on the side. "Anything you say," she replied, mischievous, and ducked into the apartment through the window.  
  
She had to rub it in, get his blood warming, and it was hot enough already without her adding to it.  
  
He settled back on the mattress. He couldn't say no to her wanting to stay, even if that meant sharing the mattress. She'd complained more than once about her cousin "Crazy" Connor, her great-uncle John's son; he didn't blame her for being spooked. He'd had the misfortune to snap some shots of people who'd rubbed Connor the wrong way, and he'd heard from Nitti, his other ...employer some nasty stuff, just enough to realize that few women as decent as Bridie could stomach someone like that. He'd even spotted Connor at the Lexington Hotel, where Capone had his headquarters, but he  
  
Maguire had helped her find an apartment of her own in the city, on Wells Street, after she'd lost her job as a governess for the daughter of one of Capone's associates, so Bridie wouldn't have to go home to her family in Rock Island where she'd have to put up with Connor on a regular basis. It was a good set-up... as long as Connor didn't find out who she was seeing.  
  
Bridie climbed back out the window, now clad in a short summer nightgown that left little to the imagination, especially his. "Y' miss me?" she asked.  
  
"You were so quiet in there, I almost forgot you'd showed up," he said.  
  
She slugged him playfully as she settled on her side of the mattress.  
  
"Does Connor know anything about us?" he asked. "Just for knowledge's sake."  
  
"Nah, I kept my uncle John in the dark when I write home," she said. "I've mentioned things like I've been seeing a guy who's a reporter, but I haven't told him what paper this reporter works for, and I make it sound like we're just friends."  
  
He propped himself on one elbow and edged toward her, leaning over her, his face moving close to hers. "Pretty involved friends, if you ask me," he purred, his lips almost against hers.  
  
She poked him in the ribs. "Oh, get going, now you're the one putting the come-hither on me!"  
  
He lay back down, away from her. "What you get for doing it to yours truly. Too hot for that anyway."  
  
"Right," she mumbled sleepily.  
  
Connor eying Bridie, he thought. At one in the same time, it irritated him that someone was pesting his girl -- her first cousin, no less! -- and he wished that Bridie had found someone else to play the hero for her. But since he'd started seeing her, he'd put his hand to the wheel and he was not turning back. That was just not his style at all.  
  
When he noticed Bridie's breathing had settled into a quiet, easy rhythm, Maguire slid closer to her, laid a gentle kiss on her ear and retreated to the far side of the mattress.  
  
* * * * * *  
  
Next morning started with a crash: when he reached to shut off the clamor of the alarm clock, he knocked it off the the fire escape. It fell and hit the sidewalk with a resounding crash, nearly hitting a little Italian guy sweeping below, who raised a tremendous racket, yelling.  
  
"Perdono me," Maguire called down, using one of a handful of Italian phrases he'd picked up working with Nitti. The Italian calmed down enough to get back to work, grumbling the whole time.  
  
Maguire sighed, turned over on the mattress and flexed his lean frame, stretching his shoulders and arching his spine. He sat up to find Bridie's side of the mattress alreayd empty. He climbed in through the apartment window in search of her.  
  
The apartment was empty, but a note in her hand lay on the kitchen table: "Gone fruit shopping. Be back in a few minutes. Kisses, Bridie.  
  
Even as he read this, he heard a knock at the hall door; finding the clean shirt and trousers he'd laid out the night before, he slung them on and went to answer the door.  
  
He let Bridie in and helped her with a large paper bag she trundled.  
  
"Good morning," she said.  
  
"'Morning," he replied. "You sleep all right?"  
  
"Better than I have the past few nights, since I had someone guarding me," she said, as he set the bag on the table. "When I woke up, I didn't want to wake you: you're so beautiful when you're asleep."  
  
That was new. "I am? What about when I'm awake?"  
  
She leaned across the table and kissed the tip of his nose. He tried to catch her under the chin and aim for her mouth, but she drew away from him. "Don't let's get started with that, or you'll get a late start and miss some good material."  
  
"You had breakfast?" he asked, changing the subject, his eye on the cinched tops of the bags.  
  
"Had it at the fruit market," she said, starting to unpack one of the bags and taking out a bunch of fresh green grapes, setting it on the table. "I got us some fresh fruit: thought I'd make a salad later to help us cool of, give you something to look forward to at the end of the day."  
  
"Just your being here when I get back is incentive enough," he said, pinching a grape off the bunch and muinching on it.  
  
She cuffed his shoulder gently. "Hey, leave that alone!" she snipped, grinning.  
  
* * * * * *  
  
A half an hour later, he headed out onto the street, camera case in hand. Already the summer sun shone thick and golden on the sidewalks, as heavy as winter honey. Even the summer weight linen jacket on his shoulders seemed to thick that early in the day, and it wouldn't improve as the day went on.  
  
He'd hit upon a few minor shots: the aftermath of a fist fight between two women at a laundry; a broken window at a hardware store: someone had made off with a table fan. He got a few human interest shots: a group of urchins revelling in the water spraying from an open hydrant the fire department happened to be cleaning out.  
  
On a side street off Wells Street, as he passed by the open window of a basement apartment, an awful stench hit his nostrils, forcing him to stop and lean against the tenement wall while his head stopped whirling. Gad, what *was* that? A dead body in there or just a dead cat? Several passersby peered at the window, but they quickly turned away, some covering their noses with hats and handkerchiefs, some of the women's face going green.  
  
Stench or no stench, someone had to take a look. He climbed down into the window well and stuck his head in through the open window.  
  
Under the sill stood a table. He lowered his case in, setting it on the light litter of papers and empty tobacco pouches and climbed in after it.  
  
He entered a small room, one half of which was crammed floor to ceiling with crates and barrels of trash. The stink from them hit him full force.  
  
Breathing through his mouth to minimize the worst of the odors, he unpacked his small Leica and loaded it with film. Case closed on the garbage can thieves, he thought, taking several shots  
  
Now what lunatic would do this and why? he wondered. What was the point? He ventured into the next room, stepping over piles of sodden newspapers bundled together and pushed open a door that stood ajar.  
  
The contents of the next room answered his unspoken question: The next room was as clean as an operating room, but still cluttered with stuff. On tables stood several vats linked together with coils of copper pipe. Several small barrels stood stacked on their sides along one wall. an alky cooker, an illict whiskey still. The garbage in the other rooms was meant to cover the reek from the still, but the hot weather had made the cover a red hat.  
  
He took several shots of the still, but the smell from the other room had started to make his head whirl again, so he packed up and started to climb out the window.  
  
He heard a door open in the room behind him as she swung his legs over the window sill. He shoved his case up onto the sidewalk and vaulted after it.  
  
"Hey, who's there?!" a male voice called from inside the apartment. Maguire walked away as naturally as he could, not looking back, except to glance without looking at the window. That was a close one....  
  
He headed back to the apartment. The stuff he'd just got was hotter than the noonday sun on the pavement, so hot the film burned a hole in his camera case.  
  
Besides, he needed a bath already, to get the stench out of his pores and what was left of his hair.  
  
"Heat get to you or did you find something good?" Bridie asked, looking up from her typewriter when he entered. "Phew! where'd you pick that smell up?"  
  
"I just found out the whereabouts of the garbage can thieves," he said, unpacking the rolls of film and hustling them into the dark room before he headed into the washroom. Couldn't risk the stink getting into the film.  
  
"What thieves...? Oh, those thieves," she said.  
  
"Yeah, *those* thieves," he said, running water in the tub. "But they're up to a lot more than stealing people's trach cans. I'll tell yah when I get the prints developed."  
  
* * * * * *  
  
An hour later, he had the usable shots ready to deliver to Buchner at the "Herald".  
  
"You realize what these nuts are up to?" Bridie said, looking over the prints spread out on the table.  
  
"Yeah, they rigged a screen for their still," he said. "The figured what better way to cover the smell than with garbage in hot weather."  
  
"One problem though: the blood dog smelled 'em out," she said. "So, you gonna bust 'em?"  
  
"Naw: it's a free country, used to be till the Eighteenth Amendment got passed."  
  
She regarded him with narrowed eyes. "Funny coming from you: didn't you father have a drinking problem?"  
  
He started to gather up the shots of the trash-strewn half of the apartment. "He did, but why should the people who don't have drinking problems have to be denied one of life's pleasures just because some people can't hold their liquor? You may as well outlaw guns just because some screwballs shot their cheating spouses."  
  
"You have a point," she said. "Not that I'm keen on Prohibition either."  
  
He nudged her. "Of course: Your uncle made a fortune in the alky trade."  
  
"No, more than that: Prohibition is just a narrow Puritanical notion, and I ain't no Puritan."  
  
He eyed her sidewise. "Thank God you're not, or else what are you doing here in a bachelor's apartment."  
  
She gave him a playful jab in the ribs.  
  
* * * * * *  
  
Later that evening, Maguire sat on the fire escape minus his shirt, basking in the last dull rays of the fading sunset and musing over his photos on the front page of the evening edition of the "Herald": "Garbage Can Thieves' Stash Discovered", 'Herald Photographer Catches the Scent'.  
  
Bridie stuck her head out the window. "So, the cops ever find out about the squirrel stash?" she asked.  
  
Maguire folded up the newspaper. "Last I heard, the Board of Health was stepping in to clean up the mess, even though the cops wanted to take a look at it first. The boys in blue are bound to find that still, sooner or later. More's the pity: If those idiots were dumb enough to try running a still in the middle of a city, they're too stupid to be in the racket."  
  
She climbed out through the window, carefully carrying two ice-chattering glasses of iced tea. "You should know: you're the crime expert."  
  
He eyed the glasses as she offered him one. "Not to sound ungrateful, but whatever became of the fruit salad?"  
  
"Aw, I went shopping for the secret ingrediant, but I couldn't find it," she said.  
  
"And what's the secret ingredient?"  
  
She crossed her eyes at him. "Can't tell you: it won't be a secret then." Relaxing her eyes, she continued, "I probably could have got it at another shop, but I spotted Connor on the street, so I ducked back before he spotted me."  
  
"Wise choice," Maguire said.  
  
"You met him?"  
  
"Not personally, but I've heard tell about him and I've... er, picked up shots that might have been his work."  
  
She regarded him with something like sympathy. "I hope you never meet him."  
  
She sat in silence for a while, looking up at the sky, at the stars starting to appear in the midnight blue velvet above. "Are you going to?"  
  
"Going to what?"  
  
"You said the mugs with the still were too stupid to be in the business."  
  
"What are getting at?"  
  
"You should tell the cops: if they're so dumb they ran a still in the middle of the city, they're probably too stupid to cook it properly. So why not do your duty to the public and protect them from their cheap hooch?"  
  
"Here, which one of us is the newspaperman?" he demanded, teasing.  
  
"Just some of the tricks of your trade rubbing off on me," she said, smiling.  
  
* * * * * *  
  
In the middle of the night, raindrops started splatting onto the skin of Maguire's back. He jerked awake and got up, helping a still sleepy Bridie over the windowsill into the room and hauling the mattress in after them before it got soaked.  
  
Lightning flashed in the near distance, closely followed by a rumble of thunder.  
  
"The All Mighty's taking pictures," Bridie twitted, but he heard a note of fear in her voice.  
  
He slipped his arm under her and drew her close, protectingly. "Hey, we're inside; it won't hurtcha in here." But he felt her wince as a flash lit up the window and a thunderclap rocked the room.  
  
A bolt exploded overhead, the thunderclap coming at the exact moment. Bridie shrieked and clung to him. He turned her face into the angle of his neck and leaned over her, putting himself in her angle of vision. He caught himself trying to remember the melody of that lullaby his sister used to sing to him whenever there was a storm, when he was a kid: Lily meant it to comfort him, but he always knew she was singing it to keep her own wits together.  
  
As the flashes faded and the rumbles grew fainter, he felt Bridie's breathing relax and her racing haertbeat slow to a soft rhythm.  
  
* * * * * *   
  
"I thought the storm would cool things off," Bridie said, as she cleared the breakfast dishes.  
  
Maguire felt the back of his shirt already sticking to his shoulder blades. "Yeah, it just made the heat wet." He rummaged through his camera case, trying to see what he could jettison so he wouldn't have to lug a full load around. He settled on the pocket-sized Kodak, which he slipped into the left pocket of his jacket, along with a small packet.  
  
On hot days, it was common for the crime reporters in the city to congregate in the basement of the precinct, something Maguire generally avoided, but today the heat forced him to make an exception to his policy of staying one step ahead of the police whenever a window got smashed or the carnage went down.  
  
"Hey, look who's here, the blood dog himself!" Trohan from the City News Bureau called out, sitting with his chair tilted back against the wall as Maguire entered the dim-lit room. A few cops and newspapermen sat along the wall, jackets off, collars open, clearly revelling in the cool air.  
  
"Heard yah made a big stink, feller," put in Houlihan, a cop Maguire had encountered at many crime scenes in the city. "The boys wanna thank yah fer breakin' that one for us, tho' the nuts from the Board a' Health won't let us take a peek at the dump."  
  
Maguire reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple folded prints of the still. "Maybe I can get you a little leverage." He laid the photos on a folding table in the middle of the room. Houlihan leaned over his shoulder, small eyes squinting at the photos.  
  
"Good lord, *that's* why they had that room fulla trash," the big cop murmured. "They're hiding a still."  
  
The other cops and the reporters gathered around the table.  
  
"High marks in cleverness, no marks in intelligence or timing," said "Spider" Webb from the "Tribune". "They coulda pulled that off in th' winter, when it wouldn't a' stinked so bad."  
  
"Why didn'tcha break that part of it?" Houlihan asked.  
  
Maguire shrugged. "Thought I'd tease the readers a little, plus I didn't realize the Board of Health would throw a wrench into the works for you."  
  
Spider's beady black eyes scanned Maguire's face. "You're still holding something back."  
  
Now he was backed into a corner. "All right, so a friend of mine saw the shots of the still and told me I ought to do my duty to society and divulge it."  
  
"Mm, your ladyfriend I bet," Trohan said, insinuating.  
  
"What makes you say that?" Maguire asked.  
  
"Aw, you obviously ain't been readin' the gossip column lately," Spider said, grinning like a rat trap. "There was an item the other day, saying that Miss Bridget Rooney, niece of John P. Rooney of Rock Island, has been seen in the company of a news photographer for the 'Herald'."  
  
Maguire shrugged. "Not anybody's business except Miss Rooney's an' that photographer -- whoever he is."  
  
"Besides," Trohan put in, "Gossip is a woman's vice."  
  
"Wisely put," Maguire agreed.  
  
* * * * * *   
  
"Stashed Garbage Screens Still", proclaimed the headline of the evening edition.  
  
"This calls for a celebration, don'tcha think?" Bridie said, looking over Maguire's shoulder as he scanned the item, complete with one of his first photos, and another of Houlihan and several Federal agents carrying evidence out of the basement flat. The Feds weren't positive, but they suspected a gang that usually hung around Wells Street might have worked the operation.  
  
He looked up at her. "I'd hold off till they catch the lunkheads that had the still," he said.  
  
"I meant celebrating your breaking the story," she said. "You know the other papers are going to be all over you for the photos, the way they were back in February. You started a crime wave."  
  
"No, a crime wave is when rival papers start printing the same story and coloring the facts a little to one-up the competition."  
  
She rolled her eyes in embarassment. "Shows you what *I* know about the business."  
  
"Shame on you, what with your uncle owning several papers!" Maguire teased.  
  
* * * * * *  
  
An hour later, with his second shirt of the day starting to stick to his back, Maguire headed out onto the street for the last sweep of the day. With the temperature sitting at eighty degrees even though the sun was down for two hours, something was bound to happen. The heat would fry someone's temper in its own grease. He just wanted to be around when the grim results were discovered.  
  
He got a human interest shot: He spotted five kids bedded down on a fire escape, their old man keeping watch by the window, shirtless, smoking. Maguire gave the guy a finnif to buy the kids ice cream if he'd give him permission to take the kids' picture for the "Herald". The guy accepted the offer, but Maguire doubted the kids got the ice cream.  
  
Around 12.30, Maguire headed back to the apartment: Bridie would be wondering where he was, unless she had gone to see if she could get a jump on the night deliveries coming into the markets and get her secret ingredient. He had shots to develop: a fat woman had fainted from heat stroke and he'd been lucky enough see the fire department lowering her out a window using the kind of block and tackle used to move pianos. Well, she was big enough that they needed that kind of gear...  
  
He ducked into an alleyway as a shortcut home, when he spotted three guys coming toward him, backlit by the diffused streetlight from the end of the alley: a tall lean guy with what looked like a panama hat perched on his head, flanked by two shorter guys in straw flats. One of the two sideguys, the one on the middle guy's right, stood no taller than four foot high.  
  
Despite the sweat weighing them down, the hairs rose on the back of Maguire's neck.  
  
The guy in the middle had the same lean silouette as Connor Rooney.  
  
Rather than show his fear, Maguire kept walking. Don't mind me, just a local heading home: salesman, photographic equipment, going home to his wife and five kids, oldest one's ten...  
  
"Is that him?" the taller of the side guys asked.  
  
"Shh, Rupe! Not so loud," hissed the short guy.  
  
"What's he look like?" asked Rupe, probably Rupert.  
  
"I dunno, I didn't see all of 'um, just his shoes," the midget said.  
  
"Well then, get down on the ground and take a look at his f---ing shoes," the middle guy said. Yep, the voice...and the language. Maguire never wanted to personally meet "Crazy" Connor Rooney, known behind his back as "Looney Rooney", though he'd overheard Connor squabbling with Nitti in the hallways of the Lexington Hotel. The twerp was no businessman when it came to the kind of racket his father ran with the Chicago Outfit. And he didn't know how to use strong language properly. And *this* was the future of the Rooney clan of Rock Island?  
  
"Hey, you there!" Rupert called out. "You with the suitcase. You work for any papers in town?"  
  
"Me?" Maguire asked, playing stupid.  
  
"Yeah, you," Midgie called. "You by any chance take some snapshots of any trash heaps lately?"  
  
"Not unless there happened to be a dead body in it," Maguire said. "Kind of my specialty."  
  
"You've blown it now, you saps," Connor grumbled.  
  
"Well, you taken pictures of any trash heaps at all lately?" Rupert asked.  
  
"Not that I recall," Maguire said. Not a lie: he didn't know the exact time he'd taken those shots. "Why, what's with trash heaps?"  
  
The three men had started moving toward him again, Rupert walking quicker than the other two, so that he got behind Maguire, blocking his escape. "We'd like to know what *you* got with takin' pictures of trash heaps," Midgie said.  
  
The three closed in, backing him toward the wall of a building. Maguire didn't like the idea of having to use the camera case as a weapon. He just hoped he could swing it before Connor drew on him...  
  
Connor's right hand had already gone to his pocket. "Your last name wouldn't happen to be Maguire, would it? As in H. Maguire, the "Herald" photographer who found an alleged illict still in a basement apartment?"  
  
No way out. "Excuse me?" Maguire asked, trying to sound baffled, no easy task. He Knew more than he cared to about Connor and his violent outbursts.  
  
The Irish part of Maguire had started mentally saying nervous Hail Marys, while his photographer's eyes took in the scene ruefully. Not the last thought he wanted to have, but he could almost see the headline on next week's "True Crime": "Local Crime Scene Photographer's Bullet-Riddled Corpse Discovered".  
  
Something made him refocus, glancing past Connor's shoulder. Someone had appreoached them.  
  
"Hey there!" a voice yelled, female, but not a feminine shriek. Connor glanced over his shoulder. The other two goons had already turned away.  
  
"Yah, you three rapscallions," the woman called. Maguire recognized Bridie's voice before he saw her as she approached, brandishing a brown paper sack clenched shut in her fist. "Does it take ahll three awv yeh t' thake on just wun mahn?!" she snarled, her Irish accent popping out, as it always did when she got angry.  
  
Connor looked away at her, his hand on Maguire's shoulder releasing its grip. "Bridie, what the hell do you want?!"  
  
"Yeah, get goin': this is men's work," Rupert sneered.  
  
"Men's wurrk," she scoffed. "Oi see three cowards pickin' awn an un-armed man." She shifted the bag to her left hand slowly, methodically.  
  
Connor let Maguire go so abruptly he almost slid to the ground. "Cowards?! Who are you calling a coward, Bridget Rooney?!"  
  
"You, fer cornerin' a man smaller'n you... and gettin' two low loifes t' help yeh," Bridie countered.  
  
Midgie bristled and started toward Bridie. "Low lifes?! Now wait a minute: I may be short but I ain't --"  
  
Bridie held up the bag away from her, as she she would throw it. "I wuddn't come any nearer if Oi knew whut wuz good fahr me," she warned.  
  
Connor eyed the bag suspiciously. To Maguire's trained eye, the sweat on the back of the other man's neck looked more nervous than heat-induced. "Why, what have you got there?" he demanded, trying to drawl, but not sounding convincing.  
  
Bridie rustled the bag ominously. "I gawt me a poineapple, and I *ain't* afraid t' use it!"  
  
A pineapple? Now where on earth would she have gotten a hand grenade at this hour... unless she'd had one hidden in her apartment as "insurance". He never knew what to expect from this woman.  
  
Midgie tottered back several steps. "I ain't stickin' around if she got wunna them in the bag. Unnhh, uh!"  
  
Rupert tugged on Connor's arm, trying to get him to follow Midgie out of the alleyway. "Connor, if you don't want the three of us gettin' blown into next week, y' better let it go."  
  
Connor let the other man lead him away, but not before firing off a parting word to Bridie. "I'm not finished with you, Bridget."  
  
Once the three hooligans were out of sight, Maguire could breathe easier. Bridget came to his side. "You okay, fella?"  
  
"Yeah, just shook up a little: I'll live," he said. He glanced out the way they'd left. "We better go before they change their minds."  
  
"My thoughts exactly," Bridie said. She held up the bag. "But let me keep this ready."  
  
Back in the apartment with the hall door closed and locked, Maguire turned to Bridie as she set the bag on the table in the kitchen. "Now where in heaven's name did you get a pineapple? Your uncle John let you swipe one from the arsenal at Rock Island?"  
  
She opened the mouth of the bag and reached in. "Not exactly... It was a little challenging to get here in town,, but it came in handy," she said, and drew out...  
  
A spiny golden-yellowish brown fruit with a stiff crown of pointed leaves.  
  
He almost burst out laughing. "And here I thought all this time you had a hand grenade," he said.  
  
She grinned and went for the carving knife in the drawer. "Connor didn't need to know what flavor of pineapple I meant."  
  
"Here, let me do the honors," he said. "It's the least I can do now that I owe my life to you."  
  
He'd never actually carved one of these little gems before, but there was a first time for everything and he usually found his way around things...  
  
But as he sawed off the top, the knife slipped and nicked the outside of his thumb. The usual misadventures...  
  
The End  
  
Afterword:  
  
I have a wild Halloween story planned as the immediate followup to this, a little less humorous and more dramatic... and it will also feature our boy in action with his...other job. 


End file.
